Strange behaviour from E5186

[kalevra]

After receiving my router a month ago everything was hunky-dory. Had a relatively stable connect of around 15Mbps down and 2Mbps up (ping +-30ms). Not the best but good enough. About 2 weeks in I started noticing that the connection often became very unreliable - the browser would be stuck trying to connect to DNS, or connecting to the site. After sometime I realised that if I disconnect and reconnect the wifi connection to the E5186 a lot of the time it immediately worked after this and it would connect and I could continue streaming\ browsing etc.

It's occurring on at least 3 different computers (two laptops and one desktop machine with different wifi interfaces).

Anyone seen anything similar, could this be a hardware issue with the router?

I have tried resetting to factory defaults. But no luck...

Device info:
Device name: E5186s-61a
Hardware version: CL2E5175HM
Software version: 21.286.30.00.1232
Web UI version: 16.100.02.00.03

 

[kalevra]

No replies, obviously not happening to anyone else out there?
I saw a similar post where a user described how they had to constantly restart the E5186. Other users put this down to connectivity issues, but I'm wondering if it's not somehow related. The reason I say is because when you restart the router you also 'bounce' your wifi connectivity and is also precisely what I tried when it first started to occur (because surely wifi can't cause this kind of thing to happen?)

Still hoping someone knows of an issue or a firmware upgrade I can do. Otherwise I'll wait for the TM techie to get in touch.

 

[kalevra]

One more update. I've connected the router via LAN cable and it's, so far, working without fault. Will try this out for a while and report back. As I said in OP - the wifi issue is apparent on 3 different machines so it's clearly not specific to the wifi interface of a particular machine.

If it continues to 'behave' on LAN wondering if that indicates it's definitely a device issue (perhaps there is some interference occurring that messing something up). I've tried with the 5Ghz WLAN disabled. This doesn't happen when I use my Samsung S6 Edge as a wifi access point - that hums along perfectly (unfortunately that's Voda data so not workable long term)

 

[sajunky]

Watch LAN icon on the wired connected PC. When router is rebooting you will notice "cable unplugged" message. This will only happen when router is rebooting completely. You won't have any indications of dropped cellular network connection, only internet pausing for couple seconds.

 

[kalevra]

Watch LAN icon on the wired connected PC. When router is rebooting you will notice "cable unplugged" message. This will only happen when router is rebooting completely. You won't have any indications of dropped cellular network connection, only internet pausing for couple seconds.

Yeah - that's the behaviour I'm used to. This is completely new to me.

Update:
After running from the LAN cable for the past 3 days I have no issues. When using Wifi again there are issues as described in original post. There must be something dodgy with the wifi hardware\firmware in the E5186.

From the lack of the responses here looks like no one else is having this issue - I'm going to get TM to take the router in and have it looked at and hopefully replaced. Suppose I could just go the LAN route but not really keen on having to lay cable across our house and having to be be plugged into a LAN point all the time. Or perhaps even just plugging a WAP into one of the E5186's LAN ports to use different wifi hardware (ridiculous to need to do so but a possible solution none the less)

 

[Radioboy]

One more update. I've connected the router via LAN cable and it's, so far, working without fault. Will try this out for a while and report back. As I said in OP - the wifi issue is apparent on 3 different machines so it's clearly not specific to the wifi interface of a particular machine.

If it continues to 'behave' on LAN wondering if that indicates it's definitely a device issue (perhaps there is some interference occurring that messing something up). I've tried with the 5Ghz WLAN disabled. This doesn't happen when I use my Samsung S6 Edge as a wifi access point - that hums along perfectly (unfortunately that's Voda data so not workable long term)

Necro,

I also have this issue lately. Connecting the router via cable works 100% - but Wifi is messed up on all devices.

Did you manage to sort it out?

 

[RedhotNeo]

Change your wifi band to channel 1 and set your router to use 20Mhz band.. try that, that should fix up your errors.

Some devices dont connect well on 40Mhz.

 

[RainerZA]

Have you tried changing the channel the wifi broadcasts at? When multiple wifi routers (yours and neighbours for example) are talking on the same channel they may drown each other out. This youtube video illustrates this concept, it may be a bit long but worth the watch if you are not aware of it.

How to Analyze and Set Up Your Wireless Network - JayzTwoCents